BSW is doing it. Are you?

BSW is doing it. Are you?

The rules keep changing. Are you keeping up?

Or better yet, are you still ahead?

Several smaller Brown Smith Wallace clients that own single buildings also have enjoyed additional tax deductions by, for example, replacing roofs. They are now able to write off the remaining basis of the old roof for more than $10,000 of tax savings.

Setting the bar — clarifying what is a repair The repair regs helped define a “Unit of Property” and clarified when the nature and amount of expenditures rise to the level of a betterment, adaption or restoration (BAR) of a unit of property, and should be capitalized. Costs which are not BAR can be expensed as a repair.

Titan was fortunately (or unfortunately?) pulled into the Repair Regs chaos last January. Remember that nightmare? However, now that the dust is settling, there are still opportunities in the new Tangible Property Regs available to may of your clients.

Call Rob at BSW, if you want to introduce your clients to another CPA firm.

Better yet, call us, and we’ll show you how to do this quickly and effectively. YOU be the hero!

About Brian Lefever

As VP of Operations - Brian is responsible for continuous product development for Titan Echo. Proudly engineering a simple and cost effective solution for CPAs to provide Cost Segregation benefits to their clients.

Search Site

The third piece of Cost Seg is Legal Analysis. Once Echo has the costs for all the items, it needs to evaluate each item under the current Cost Seg body of law. This process without a doubt is vital and quite complicated. Although it has evolved, there is conflict in the law, it’s a little dicey.

Echo has to leverage court cases against the facts and circumstances of your property, to determine which items can be reclassified from Section 1250 real property to Section 1245 personal property.

Then it applies what’s called the MACRS Asset Classification System accordingly. Then Echo can recompute depreciation based on each item’s life, method and convention, and calculate that catch-up depreciation, if available.

Ultimately, Echo will be able to complete the complicated tax Form 3115 – Change in Accounting Method to be included in the owner’s next tax return.

[ CLOSE WINDOW ]

Learn More: Construction Cost Estimating

The second step in Cost Seg is Construction Cost Estimating (CCE). Echo is going to review the supporting documents you gather – and extract any pertinent project data. Echo then does quantity takeoffs from the drawings (if you have any) – and your pictures from the field.

In the CCE step – Echo’s construction cost analysis is going to use your submitted info to build up the cost to re-build the building submitted. If you built the building (or you have actual costs) Echo will use that data, but if you don’t, we’ll rely on our database of national construction cost data.

Echo has the construction experience to determine what it would cost to build that building today, as it sits when you did the OSV. This concept is called “Reconstruction Cost New”, or “RCN”. This is a very important legal concept. There are consultants out there that don’t do it right. They do not account for all the pieces and parts of the project. They only account for the items that they believe can be reclassified as personal property.

However, until you gain ALL of the pieces – including the total cost (RCN) – and then pro-rate all these costs so it adds up to what the investor actually paid for it – you don’t really know what the cost of the these personal property items actually is. So once Echo has the RCN – we will do the proration – so that everything ties out of the basis of the building that’s currently on the Fixed Asset Schedule.

[ CLOSED WINDOW ]

Learn More: Legal Analysis

Echo has to leverage court cases against the facts and circumstances of your property, to determine which items can be reclassified from Section 1250 real property to Section 1245 personal property.

Then it applies what’s called the MACRS Asset Classification System accordingly. Then Echo can recompute depreciation based on each item’s life, method and convention, and calculate that catch-up depreciation, if available.

Ultimately, Echo will be able to complete the complicated tax Form 3115 – Change in Accounting Method to be included in the owner’s next tax return.

In the CCE step – Echo’s construction cost analysis is going to use your submitted info to build up the cost to re-build the building submitted. If you built the building (or you have actual costs) Echo will use that data, but if you don’t, we’ll rely on our database of national construction cost data.

Echo has the construction experience to determine what it would cost to build that building today, as it sits when you did the OSV. This concept is called “Reconstruction Cost New”, or “RCN”. This is a very important legal concept. There are consultants out there that don’t do it right. They do not account for all the pieces and parts of the project. They only account for the items that they believe can be reclassified as personal property.

However, until you gain ALL of the pieces – including the total cost (RCN) – and then pro-rate all these costs so it adds up to what the investor actually paid for it – you don’t really know what the cost of the these personal property items actually is. So once Echo has the RCN – we will do the proration – so that everything ties out of the basis of the building that’s currently on the Fixed Asset Schedule.